How you can resist funding the government → about the IRS and U.S. tax law/policy → IRS incompetence → enforcement effort/results → IRS Data Book numbers

Step right up folks — you won’t want to miss this exciting new attraction — direct to your computer screen from the wilds of deepest Washington, D.C. — it’s the Internal Revenue Service Data Book 2006!

<frog class="kermit"> Yaaaaaaaay! </frog>

I’m going to try to find something interesting in its 84 pages of statistics. Here goes:

Each year, people like myself file their tax returns but don’t include enough payment to cover the assessed tax, penalties, and interest. Here’s how much overdue tax, penalties, and interest have been assessed in each of the past few years (this doesn’t include the interest and penalties that continue to accrue on past-due accounts):

year	amount
2003	$46,738,194,000
2004	$50,680,546,000
2005	$57,594,901,000
2006	$69,555,590,000

The IRS collected almost $41 billion (59%) of this last year (but this amount does include accrued interest and penalties, so there’s an apples and oranges aspect to this comparison) — $1.7 billion of this through their new program of outsourcing some cases to private debt collection agencies. Of the total that was collected, taxpayers sent in $15 billion (37%) in response to the first nastygram from the IRS, and another $13 billion (33%) in response to the second nastygram. The last $12 billion (30%) was recovered through “taxpayer delinquent accounts and additional actions.”

Liens, levies and seizures are all up over recent years:

year	liens	levies	seizures
2003	544,316	1,680,844	399
2004	534,392	2,029,613	440
2005	522,887	2,743,577	512
2006	629,813	3,742,276	590

Oh, there’s more… but I’ve got my boredom threshold too.

The 2007 IRS Data Book is out. It includes information on IRS enforcement activity. In the charts below I’ve combined the numbers from this Data Book with those from an earlier edition to give a longer-term picture (I wasn’t able to find earlier figures for non-filers).

The number of people who file but who don’t include a check for what they “owe” has been increasing:

And the IRS’s backlog of these delinquent accounts has been going up as well:

The number of people who fail to file their returns when they’re supposed to also seems to be going up:

The IRS is responding with increased enforcement activity, including levies…

…liens…

…and, much more rarely, seizures.

Last Spring I shared some charts that showed how IRS enforcement activity was changing over time and also some charts showing how “delinquent” taxpayer activity was changing over time.

The new IRS Data Book is out, so I can update the numbers. Breaking with recent trends, both seizures and levies were down last year, though there was another big jump in liens filed:

On the “delinquent” side, the number of people who didn’t pay their taxes when they were due held steady, and the number of people who didn’t file on time (or at all) dropped, but the IRS continued to to be overwhelmed by the backlog of delinquent cases and so the total unresolved delinquent accounts continued to rise:

The IRS wasted a lot of time and energy rolling out its private debt collection scheme, and now they’re going to have to waste a lot more time and energy unrolling it now that it’s been abolished. They lost enforcement manpower in the course of that experiment, too. They say they plan to beef up in that area, but this will take time and the rookies will need training, so I think we can expect them to continue to have problems with their enforcement backlog for a while.

Last Spring I shared some charts that showed how IRS enforcement activity was changing over time and also some charts showing how “delinquent” taxpayer activity was changing over time.

The new IRS Data Book is out, so I can update the numbers. The number of levies and seizures are down from their peaks, but the use of liens continue to rise:

On the “delinquent” side, the number of people who didn’t pay their taxes when they were due and the number of people who didn’t file on time (or at all) are both off from their peaks, but the IRS continued to to be overwhelmed by the backlog of delinquent cases and so the total unresolved delinquent accounts continued to rise:

For the last couple of years I’ve been posting some charts that show how IRS enforcement activity is changing over time and also some charts showing how “delinquent” taxpayer activity was changing over time.

The new IRS Data Book is out, so I can update the numbers. The number of levies and seizures are down from their peaks, but the use of liens continue to rise:

On the “delinquent” side, the number of people who didn’t pay their taxes when they were due reached a new recent-years high, though the number of people who didn’t file on time (or at all) is off from its recent peak. The IRS continued to to be overwhelmed by the backlog of delinquent cases and so the total unresolved delinquent accounts continued to rise:

The new IRS Data Book is out, with information on IRS enforcement activities in 2011, so it’s time to update my graphs:

The number of tax returns filed without complete payment rose slightly last year to a little over eight million, the highest number in the 12-year period shown.

The number of returns not filed by the deadline increased last year to 2,404,000.

The total number of ‘unresolved delinquent accounts’ rose to 10,809,000 last year, the highest number in the 12-year period shown.

I was expecting sharper rises in the numbers than these, given the increased unfunded responsibilities of the IRS, the corresponding drop in enforcement personnel, and the down economy, which tends to cause more (not necessarily willful) failure to pay taxes.

I may be misjudging the effect of the economy. It may be that so many people are moving off of the income tax rolls entirely that many potential scofflaws are now just part of the “lucky ducky” set.

The new IRS Data Book is out, with information on IRS enforcement activities in 2012, so it’s time to update my graphs:

The number of tax returns filed without complete payment rose slightly last year to over 8.1 million, the highest number in the 13-year period shown.

The number of returns expected but not filed by the deadline dropped last year to 1,973,000.

The total number of ‘unresolved delinquent accounts’ rose to 11,464,000 last year, the highest number in the 13-year period shown.

After rising for several years, the number of levies served by the I.R.S. dropped last year

After rising for several years, the number of liens filed by the I.R.S. dropped last year

The number of property seizures by the I.R.S. dropped last year.

There’s a new IRS DataBook out, so I’ve updated my charts with numbers for last year:

Between 1992 and 1997, the I.R.S. was using property seizure about 10,000 times per year, but then the numbers suddenly dropped, and have been in the hundreds or below since 1999.

After rising for several years since a low in 2000, the number of levies served by the I.R.S. has been dropping again

After rising for several years since 1999, the number of liens filed by the I.R.S. has been dropping for the last three years

There’s a new IRS DataBook out, so I’ve updated my charts with numbers for last year:

After rising for several years since 1999, the number of liens filed by the I.R.S. has been dropping for the last four years

There’s a new IRS DataBook out, so I’ve updated my charts with numbers for last year:

After rising for several years since 1999, the number of liens filed by the I.R.S. has been dropping for the last five years

In other news… here’s another case of an envelope full of “white powder” shutting down an IRS building.

There’s a new IRS DataBook out, so I’ve updated my charts of IRS enforcement activity with numbers for last year:

After rising for several years since a low in 2000, the number of levies served by the I.R.S. has been dropping again, and is now at the lowest point since 2000

There’s also a new IRS Data Book out, so I can update these numbers on enforcement activity:

After rising for several years since a low in 2000, the number of levies served by the I.R.S. has been dropping again in recent years

After rising for several years since 1999, the number of liens filed by the I.R.S. has been dropping for the last six years

There’s a new IRS Data Book out, so I can update these numbers on enforcement activity:

After rising for several years since 1999, the number of liens filed by the I.R.S. has been dropping for the last seven years, with a slight uptick last year

ProPublica looks at the numbers this year — including $6.7 billion in tax debt that the IRS let the ten-year statute of limitations expire on without collecting — and asks “Has the IRS Hit Rock Bottom?” I’m guessing not. I’m really looking forward to seeing next year’s numbers.

The IRS just released its latest Data Book, which gives us some statistics about another tax season. This means I can update my charts of how IRS enforcement activity — specifically liens, levies, and property seizures — has been changing over the years. In short, all three are at twenty-year lows:

the number of levies, liens, and property seizures dropped in 2020

Some of this is no doubt due to the temporary suspension of tax enforcement during the epidemic. Much is also due to the ongoing degradation of the IRS workforce and budget. (Plans to reverse that are currently creeping their way through Congress.)